By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX – The leftish assumption that it better comprehends the bigoted minds of other people than they’re capable of knowing themselves was on typical display in an opinion column here claiming that “Trump America” actually wants to send a popular Latino state senator back to his native El Salvador.
Offering no evidence to prove her mind-reading abilities, the leftist columnist said that for the Trumpsters, Arizona state Republican Sen. Steve Montenegro is “simply an immigrant, a person of color who doesn’t belong here because he’s foreign-born and thus doesn’t fit with their Make America White Again crusade.”
The August 31 column in the left-leaning Arizona Republic, the state’s largest newspaper, said Montenegro “identifies himself as an American politician” but “the Trump America he so ardently defends doesn’t see him that way.” They’d “rather see him go back to El Salvador,” she asserted.
Wrong-o. Montenegro actually is a conservative American politician, legally brought here as a child; he doesn’t merely identify himself as one. Nor did she produce any Trumpsters in her column who were attacking Montenegro for his origins or trying to shove him back southward.
In an interview with The Wanderer, Reymundo Torres, a conservative Arizona Republican community activist, said the newspaper columnist’s accusations are “not perceiving anybody’s thoughts” correctly, although for many Republicans, “white guilt is a very strong element” that makes them “ready to run for cover” rather than try to rebut such contrived attacks.
Being of Latino origin, neither Torres nor Montenegro cowers before phony accusations that they’re racist Republicans.
Torres is a third-generation American with a Mexican heritage. His parents in the U.S. sent him to Mexico City for college where he could learn to speak Spanish.
“There has never been an effective Republican response to race-baiting,” Torres said during a September 18 interview, adding that such passive Republicans wave the white flag before the battle even begins.
On another topic, Torres, a strong champion of border security, said he thinks Sen. Jeff Flake’s current campaign-advertising attempts to pose as a border defender will fall short.
“I think it will be absolutely too little, too late with Republicans who care about that issue” for Flake to reposition himself, Torres said.
Flake and John McCain are Arizona’s two open-borders GOP U.S. senators who pose as border hawks when election season rolls around.
Noting early polls showing Flake significantly behind GOP challenger Kelli Ward for Arizona’s August 28, 2018, primary election, Torres said, “It’s not looking good for Jeff, nor should it be.” Although polls can change with the primary nearly a year distant, Torres said, Flake is “widely at odds” with many Arizonans’ views.
Some recent polls showed Ward ahead of Flake by margins ranging from 14 to 26 points.
And Flake has hurt himself with many Arizona Republicans because of his insistent opposition to President Trump, Torres said.
However, Torres said, either Ward or Flake still could lose the U.S. Senate seat to a Democrat in next year’s general election, in November, because of resentments left by the primary race.
“It’s something I as a conservative am very, very worried about,” Torres said.
Left-wing Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat representing Arizona’s Ninth District, hasn’t discouraged the idea she may run for the Senate seat.
Sinema entered politics on the left but has hoped voters forget her earlier extremism — not that she repudiated it. She worked for Ralph Nader’s presidential candidacy, ran as a Green Party candidate for the state legislature and lost, and remarkably proclaimed that stay-at-home moms are “leeches.”
The PowerLine blog on September 18 said Sinema “is said to be the first openly bisexual woman elected to Congress, as well as the only openly non-theist or atheist member of the current Congress.”
Torres told The Wanderer that Sinema has become “a lot more nuanced in her speech and in her commentary.”
If Flake wins next year’s primary, Torres said, a significant number of Republicans who oppose Flake wouldn’t vote for him in November.
And if Ward becomes the GOP nominee, he said, a number of Republicans would turn their backs on her and vote for the Democrat. Torres recalled “Republicans for Janet,” GOP members who voted for pro-abortion, pro-homosexual Democrat Janet Napolitano for Arizona governor rather than her conservative GOP opponent.
Napolitano was the last Democrat to win a statewide election in Arizona, in 2006, Torres recalled.
“This is not a tossup state,” he said, although Republican victories can’t simply be taken for granted.
Commenting on a somewhat different issue, an Arizonan born south of the border, Luz Fuenzalida, told The Wanderer in an interview that “Dreamers” have no fundamental right to stay in the United States, although there should be limited exceptions for people to “straighten out whatever they need to straighten out.”
A native of Chile, Fuenzalida came to the U.S. legally and later became a citizen here. She strongly favors border security.
“Dreamers” is a general term for young illegal aliens brought to the U.S. by their parents and in 2012 granted a temporary permission to stay through Barack Obama’s illegally created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA).
The Trump administration announced on September 5 it’s ending DACA, but allowing Congress six months to devise a legal, replacement program.
Fuenzalida is a longtime pro-life sidewalk counselor and says she sees the damage to families caused by illegal immigration, such as sexual promiscuity and loss of religious faith.
“I have been very active outside the abortion chambers for years,” she said. “. . . I would say illegal immigration destroys the family by dividing it.”
She doesn’t think entire families should be allowed to be in the U.S. because one of their members is a citizen here.
“The children belong with their parents. The parents belong in their country of origin, because they’re here illegally,” she said. “If the children want to come back (to the U.S.) when they’re 18, of age,” and already have U.S. citizenship, that can be permitted, she said.
“. . . Every country has to protect their citizens first, period,” she said.
“Basically, the Dreamers need to wake up because there is nothing free in this world, and they need to realize that,” she said. “. . . The money doesn’t come from nowhere, the money doesn’t grow on trees. It comes from taxes,” which often are taken from legal citizens and residents, not from the illegal immigrants the taxes are spent on.
As for illegal immigrants who have established themselves here and whose only violation is their illegal entry, “I want to leave a door open … I would like to leave some kind of hope,” Fuenzalida said, if they have no other violations including domestic violence or driving under the influence.
“I’m talking about those” who “could get a pathway . . . allow them to be here legally . . . straighten out whatever they need to straighten out” in order to be on the way to citizenship, she said. “. . .Otherwise, we sound like we don’t want them, period.”
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